Aeroflot resumes direct regular flights to Canada

June 02, 2013, 23:46 UTC+3Aeroflot predicts a high demand for direct flights to Toronto

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OTTAWA, June 2 (Itar-Tass) - Russian’s Aeroflot airline after a four-year break on Sunday resumed direct regular flights from Toronto to Moscow. Representative of the airline in the United States Andrei Novokshonov told Itar-Tass that the Boeing-767 airliner took off from Pearson International Airport and will land at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo on Monday morning.

“The flights will be performed three times a week - on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays,” said Novokshonov, who was engaged in the relevant organisational issues in Toronto. “The Flight time is approximately nine hours. Besides the Boeings, the Airbus airliners are also included in the winter schedule on this route. Aeroflot predicts a high demand for direct flights to Toronto.”

According Novokshonov who arrived in the afternoon from Moscow, an “inauguration” was arranged for Russia’s Boeing at the airport - according to the tradition observed all over the world. “After landing at the approach to the terminal the plane met with a ‘water salute’ from two fire engines - on both sides of the plane they created a kind of an arch of water,” the airline representative said.

Aeroflot for the first time started to make flights to Toronto in 1998, and before that - for more than 30 years - it was performing flights to Montreal. In 2009, at the height of the global financial crisis, the Board of Directors of the airline decided to suspend flights to the capital of the province of Ontario, “given the decline in demand and the need to optimise the use of the air fleet.” Since then, only the Transaero airline has operated on this route.